2000 Readers' Choice Awards

Roll out the red carpet, it's time to
announce the winners of the 2000 Linux Journal
Readers' Choice Awards. After another explosive year, the hype and
trendiness have cleared to reveal (as we knew it would) that Linux
is a serious contender in almost every market. Although some
speculate that the development of all things Linux has settled
down, we know the revolution is gaining breadth and speed. While we
all look forward to the new applications, devices and services on
the horizon, these awards are an opportunity to appreciate what we
already have. Judging by this year's list of choices (the longest
ever), not to mention all those write-ins, we have a lot. To get an
idea of what voters said, I've included some quotes for each
category.

Over 4,000 readers voted in 24 categories on everything from
favorite programming language to favorite game. What overall moral
can we discern from this year's responses? The percentage of voters
with fervent opinions is directly proportional to those with
caffeine addictions. Coincidence...I don't think so.

Favorite Distribution: Red Hat Linux

“I love them all.”

Red Hat Linux regains the top spot, the first time since
1997, with over twice the votes of the second-place distribution,
SuSE. Mandrake doubles its percentage from last year to just over
14%, placing it third. Last year's winner, Debian GNU/Linux, falls
to fourth place. Slackware has a respectable showing with 8.5% of
the total vote. The most popular write-ins are FreeBSD and “roll
my own”.

Favorite Office Suite: StarOffice

“StarOffice but quickly becoming
KOffice.”

With over 63% of the votes, StarOffice is the clear winner;
WordPerfect comes in second with only 12%. The office suite is a
sore spot for many Linux users, as shown by the write-in comments.
Quite a few voters apologize before picking Microsoft Office as
their favorite, and almost as many decry, “None, they all suck.”
Emacs, vi and clones, and GNOME Office Suite all make write-in
appearances.

Favorite Desktop Environment: KDE

“Command line.”

While some proclaimed KDE dead with the announcement of the
GNOME Foundation this past August, LJ readers
chose KDE as their favorite desktop environment for the third year
in a row. With 400 fewer votes, GNOME takes second place. Window
Maker and Enlightenment are only 40 votes apart, but neither
received more than 9.7%.

Favorite Word Processor: StarOffice

“WP8, only not that Windows junk.”

StarOffice claims a resounding victory in the word processor
voting, racking up almost twice as many votes as its nearest
competitor, WordPerfect. After those two, however, the results
split into many processors with a few votes each, suggesting that
this is one of the more personal categories, where everyone has an
old favorite.

Favorite Text Editor: vi and clones

“Elvis—so good it deserves its own
category!”

If people are loyal to their old favorites in any category,
it's got to be this one. vi and
clones, a broad list, is once again your favorite text editor, with
almost 40% of the total votes. Emacs are popular in all their
forms, Gnu Emacs, X Emacs and the LaTeX+Emacs combo. Some write-ins
express a desire to see some vi clones, like Elvis and VIM, given
their own, separate listings. Maybe next year.

Most Indispensable Linux Book: Running
Linux

“What are these book things you refer
to?”

“The whole O'Reilly series—life without them
would be a disaster!”

Running Linux, by Matt Welsh, takes
first place and Linux in a Nutshell, by Ellen
Siever et al, takes second, in a reversal of last year's top two
books. The margin was close though, with only 34 votes separating
them. Looking at the complete list of vote-getters, the most
extensive list for any category, many books appear indispensable to
LJ readers. But not everyone is an avid Linux
book reader; numerous write-ins show up for man pages and on-line
documentation.

As Linux continues to play an ever increasing role in corporate data centers and institutions, ensuring the integrity and protection of these systems must be a priority. With 60% of the world's websites and an increasing share of organization's mission-critical workloads running on Linux, failing to stop malware and other advanced threats on Linux can increasingly impact an organization's reputation and bottom line.

Most companies incorporate backup procedures for critical data, which can be restored quickly if a loss occurs. However, fewer companies are prepared for catastrophic system failures, in which they lose all data, the entire operating system, applications, settings, patches and more, reducing their system(s) to “bare metal.” After all, before data can be restored to a system, there must be a system to restore it to.

In this one hour webinar, learn how to enhance your existing backup strategies for better disaster recovery preparedness using Storix System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin), a highly flexible bare-metal recovery solution for UNIX and Linux systems.